So far, my blog posts have all been about the things that sales managers find the hardest to do. But there are some management behaviors that people are generally pretty good at.  There are six ‘easy’ behaviors that break down into three categories.

The first set of these “easy” behaviors is really about being a good person:

• “having integrity and demonstrating honesty”
• “being reliable”

It turns out these are essentially binary – you are either good at them or you aren’t.  Luckily, less than 5% of direct reports score their managers as lacking integrity and only about 7% think that their manager is unreliable.

This means if somebody’s direct reports score them low in these behaviors, then it’s a good predictor that that person won’t be an effective manager.

The second category of attributes that people scored well at is around following the rules:

• “Considers compliance and general risk implications”
• “Drives compliance with the sales process”

The third category of attributes is about managing upward:

• “Garners respect by senior management”
• “Champions corporate initiatives”

The good news about these categories being ‘easy’ is that, for the most part, managers are listening to what you tell them.  They make sure reps are doing the right activities and they communicate what senior leadership says they should.  And they are fundamentally reliable and honest.

What does this mean in practice?   Read More »

By Andrew Kent

The BP/Transocean oil eruption has been generating a gusher of environmental news—and regulatory risk for companies—but perhaps an even bigger headline for B2B suppliers is P&G’s new Supplier Environmental Sustainability Scorecard, unveiled last week.  In one year, suppliers’ greenhouse gas emissions, energy usage, and waste disposal will begin to impact their relationships with P&G (you can download the scorecard here).

With the scorecard’s announcement, the world’s largest consumer goods producer joins the world’s largest retailer in forcing suppliers to account for their environmental practices (Walmart is in the process of adopting strict environmental labeling requirements).

The message is clear: the recession did nothing to halt green business’s momentum, and sustainability’s impact on the bottom line will inexorably increase in the coming years.

Fortunately for Sales, this is also an opportunity to generate loyalty—by teaching customers how improving sustainability can improve business results.  Indeed, SEC research shows that the biggest driver of loyalty in B2B relationships is a sales rep’s ability to teach customers about underappreciated opportunities and risks to its business.

Sales can teach customers five basic ways in which sustainability improves business results.  What’s more, each of these five benefits will be more or less relevant for different stakeholders.  Below, you’ll find guidance for reps on how to tailor green/sustainability pitches to individual stakeholders:   Read More »

We’ve just finished talking with over a hundred members for our new study Building Managers for a Return to Growth, and one of the themes we saw was that there is an unprecedented amount of change happening in sales organizations.

Why?  Well, it’s not necessarily by choice.   Given a mandate to grow but faced with resistant customers, sales organizations realize they need a new playbook.  More companies than ever are re-examining value propositions, go-to-market models, territories and customer interactions.  And they’re recognizing the importance of new rep skills for selling in a complex environment.

But, of course, change is hard.  One of my favorite articles on the subject is from business magazine Fast Company, titled Change or Die.  In it, medical specialists talk about the challenge of getting patients to change behaviors – stop smoking, drinking, eating too much, reduce stresses, and exercise more.

It turns out those five behavioral issues account for 80% of the healthcare budget in the US.  Often, those bad habits lead to expensive heart procedures.  But these are generally only temporary measures; those who receive treatment are told to switch to a healthier lifestyle before heart disease kills them.  After two years, guess how many had changed habits?

10%.  That’s a pretty sad number.

But it shows that even when patients face a shorter life, old habits die hard.

Thankfully, the article provides some answers as well.  Some change efforts have been successful in the medical world.  What can we learn from them (both personally and professionally)?  Read More »

One drawback of being a consultant is that the first response to most questions can end up being a variation of “it depends”. It’s thus a wonderful thing that the question we are asked most often here at the Council has a simple, absolute answer. The question is about the number of direct reports that a sales manager should have. And the answer is: 8.

In our 2010 study of sales leadership, we found that the median span of control for a sales manager was 8 (the average was a little higher at 9.84, basically at 1:10). In 2008, the median was again 8. In 2007, the median span of control was a little lower at 7.4.

Part of why this number has to be 8 is driven by how a sales manager spends their time.  Assuming that a sales manager spends their time in a standard fashion, they will have approximately 8 hours a week to devote to coaching. And if we assume that a meaningful coaching interaction is about spending 3-5 hours with somebody per month, then that means that your average sales manager can coach 2 people per week. Assuming 4 weeks a month, that means that your average sales manager can manage a maximum of 8 people.

If you were ambitious, then you might assume that a sales manager can spend up to 3 days in the field, which would suggest that the maximum number of direct reports a sales manager can closely manage is probably around 12 people. But the manager with that many direct reports cannot be long responsible for too many reports or too many other things; they simply don’t have the time and they will likely leave a cross-section of their direct reports to essentially fend for themselves.

But there’s something about the consistency of the number eight across firms that is fascinating, and it made me wonder if others had observed a similar thing.  Read More »

With an increasing number of indicators suggesting that the world economy is slowly heating up again, many sales leaders are facing a very different talent market than we had in 2009.  And this could be a very big problem.

Here’s the way I see it:

1.) We’ve trimmed our sales teams down to the bare minimum, asking salespeople to deliver the same results with substantially fewer resources.

2.) We’ve let go of many of our low and average performers, leaving a talent bench that is comprised of a greater proportion of stars than ever before.

3.) Meanwhile, the stars in our sales force are precisely the ones most difficult to engage and retain.

Indeed, the statistics suggest that many of our stars in fact do not intend to stick around. Ongoing research by the Corporate Leadership Council, our sister program for HR execs, suggests that one in four top-performers plan to walk out the door within the next 12 months. Sales specific data cuts show that 10% of salespeople were already making phone calls and sending resumes to other employers as early as September of last year. As one member summarized to us, “We’re sitting on a powder keg of sales personnel churn, and the only thing keeping it from exploding is a weak labor market.”

Our guidance? Keep close tabs on your employee churn numbers, particularly for your stars. As I suggested in my previous post, double-down on efforts to engage high-performers by providing them with continuing stretch opportunities. And avoid these common mistakes with your stars:  Read More »

Recent economic uncertainty has put pressure on sales managers to take on more responsibility. Specifically, sales leaders and the corporate center have increased the volume of reporting requests on managers. Fearing disproportioned time allocation, members asked us this year to conduct an audit of manager time spend.   

When we asked sales reps to indicate how their managers spend their time, a reasonably clear pattern of sales manager activity emerged:

1)   17% of manager time is spent on ‘sales and customer relationships’.

2)   19% is spent on ‘coaching, developing, and motivating individuals’. (For more information here, check out my previous post which shows sales reps essentially spend no quality time with their manager.)

3)   14% of time is spent on planning and analysis and a further 10% on strategizing and deciding what direction to give.

4)   Another 8% is spent on the manager’s own career and development.

5)   The last grouping is a large one and fully 31% of a manager’s time is spent on “fulfilling administrative and corporate requests” and “managing interruptions and dealing with problems”.

It’s this last piece that turns out to be a robust predictor of how reps at any one company perceive the quality of their managers.  Read More »

Shopping for a new camera might seem exciting at first, but is never an easy task.  Especially if, like me, you’ve decided to get serious with your photography and buy a semi-professional camera.  What should the pixel count be?  What is a good format size?  How well does the camera handle noise?

The list of considerations is endless …

And it’s a big decision.  Once you commit to a brand, you tend to stick with it for future cameras, so you can take advantage of the investments you make in the camera, such as lenses, which are rarely compatible across brands.

Recently, my search for a camera led me to the nearest Canon store.  To my surprise, it wasn’t really a store in the traditional sense, but rather, what Canon calls, an Experience Center. 

What distinguished it from a traditional store was that you couldn’t really purchase anything.  It was meant instead for you to experience the brand.  The staff was extremely knowledgeable, spending a generous amount of time with each visitor.  You could try your hand at all the Canon products, even the ones that you knew you couldn’t afford.

By the time I was done, I was convinced that Canon was the brand for me.  I realized just how successfully they had sold me the experience (and not just a product) and possibly made a customer for life. 

Though this was a B2C retail experience, there are a couple things we can learn here that apply to B2B sales:  Read More »

Members are always telling me about their struggles with sales tool adoption and I always tell them the same thing – first and foremost, when it comes to ensuring that your tools will be used, you have to build the right infrastructure for tool creation in the first place.

No matter what you’re building, who’s building it, or who’s sponsoring it, you’ve got to adhere to these seven steps if you want reps to consistently take advantage of your suite of tools:

1. Keep Your Eye on the Prize. Make absolute certain the tool is built back from actual outcomes your organization, and more specifically, your sales reps, are seeking to achieve.  More often than not, simply building a tool based on stated needs can lead you to a place where a tool fails to achieve its anticipated impact and falls far short of expected adoption.  

• Check out Toyota’s process for ensuring that tool-building efforts solve the correct problems.

2. Prioritize Tool Requests. Put in place some sort of principled prioritization mechanism that guides tool development.  Too often, we flood the tool marketplace with endless ROI calculators, collateral, etc. without making sure the most important tools land on reps’ desks first.  Without a prioritization strategy in place, it’s usually the squeakiest wheel or the most senior request that automatically gets to cut to the front of the line. 

• Review Schneider Electric’s tool prioritization scorecard as a solution to this challenge.

3. Run to Feedback. When designing a tool, make sure you collect very early input from field-based power users around which problems are worth solving with the tool in the first place. Read More »